Sound off on recruiting rankings...

[Svoboda]

The Staff here at GH have something very exciting planned, but we'd like to get feedback from our members before we finalize our plans.

We plan on developing a composite ranking system and we'd like to hear what our loyal members think are issues with the Rivals, Scout, ESPN, CSTV or RISE rankings? Is there anything you would like to see taken into account that isn't?

Lets hear it!

[NDGirlzRock]

My beef with Scout is that they remove ND, from time to time, from a recruits list of interested schools. (i.e. Scout has removed ND from Sabino's interested list, as well as Patchan) Hate when they do that! Are they afraid of the ND showing up on all of the major recruits lists or what?

[IrishCalves]

My beef with CSTV is the total homer-ism. Tom Lemming is a nice guy, but almost every single Notre Dame kid they've gotten this year is a 5 star recruit. Even Hafis Williams was first mentioned as a 5 star. Please, I appreciate the sentiment, but the rest of the world sees him as a high 3 low 4 caliber recruit, who only got offers from PSU, RU, Maryland, and one or two more schools.

[ND Fanatic]

One thing I wish Scout and Rivals would do is re-rank all the recruiting class after their sophmore or junior years. This would drastically re-order the classes due to some of these schools inability to get and keep these kids in school and eligible. Some of the schools in the BCS conferences take these monsterous classes, 30-31 kids, and only 20 can qualify for admittance in the university and they try and keep them eligible whil they are there.
Thats why the rankings, for me, are pretty useless. Yeah, schools can beat their chest and say we have the #1 recruiting class and use it for springboard for future recruiting classes, but if half the kids don't qualify for school, who cares.
A re-ranking of classes after their sophmore/junior year would really tell how good a class is, and let people/kids know and understand whats really happening at the university level. If a recruit sees that half of the recruiting class he is joining may not be at that particular university in a year or two, maybe they would re-think their decision.

[piyachi]

Well there are flaws with each of the systems, and the comprehensive ranking sounds like a great idea.

Yea, Lemming makes the CSTV ones a bit unreliable since he hypes-up every ND recruit. Scout seems to me to have a bit more love for the offensive recruits, although maybe that is just a perception thing. Rivals has their southern bias, although that isn't too bad.

In terms of putting it all together here are some thoughts:
- why not factor in who offered the kid in how they are rated? ( I have seen too many kids with great offers get lousy ratings from a pay service.... clearly the staffs of major programs have some idea what they are looking at)
- big fan of how rivals has both a star system as well as a numerical grade. it puts the player in a general field as far as talent and also gets more into the nitty-gritty of who they think is better.
- the pros and cons section from scout is nice, gives a good synopsis
- on the rivals 100, the one-liner comments are also nice. just gives a nice overview of something impressive like having 150 tackles

Sorry that ran on a bit, and I'm not sure if you have the time to invest in adding those features but hey you asked for it :D

[IrishKnight1023]

Well there are flaws with each of the systems, and the comprehensive ranking sounds like a great idea.

Yea, Lemming makes the CSTV ones a bit unreliable since he hypes-up every ND recruit. Scout seems to me to have a bit more love for the offensive recruits, although maybe that is just a perception thing. Rivals has their southern bias, although that isn't too bad.

In terms of putting it all together here are some thoughts:
- why not factor in who offered the kid in how they are rated? ( I have seen too many kids with great offers get lousy ratings from a pay service.... clearly the staffs of major programs have some idea what they are looking at)
- big fan of how rivals has both a star system as well as a numerical grade. it puts the player in a general field as far as talent and also gets more into the nitty-gritty of who they think is better.
- the pros and cons section from scout is nice, gives a good synopsis
- on the rivals 100, the one-liner comments are also nice. just gives a nice overview of something impressive like having 150 tackles

Sorry that ran on a bit, and I'm not sure if you have the time to invest in adding those features but hey you asked for it :D

---------Basically everything he just said was perfect. The Scout "Strengths" and "Areas for improvement" are pretty awesome. Add to the fact that I think the kid Compton is a good football player, but doesn't have many major offers really and attends Rivals camps and Scout camps and he gets bumped up into top tier level. I think rankings should be highly recognized off of a recruits offer list (Unless he committed early like Cwynar and Goodman.) then you have to go by early interest, film and whatnot. A top 100 and 250 is very good as well. I think a recruits scout page is set-up better than that of Rivals, but Rivals gives you free video and more accurate rankings which puts it over the top. Lemming may be biased, but I do not think he is THAT BAD. He gave Slaughter 4 stars which is a start lol. I think the guys he gave 5 stars are Hafis, Hunter, maybe Blanton?, Crist and Rudolph. Thats alot, but don't destroy him for it. He also has Filer as the #1 player in Illinois and he's not committed to us and I don't know of anybody who has a good feeling on him. If you look at his top 100 list last year, it's not like you see 5 ND players that don't belong there, it's pretty damn accurate as is his other years of top 100. I'm rambling on as well, but that is my imput.

[Smithers]

I sort of agree in terms of looking at the offer list. My only gripe with that would be if a FL kid gets offered by the big 3 and Georgia. Does that make him an elite prospect? And if he isn't offered by any of them, does that mean he sucks?

Rankings are cool to brag about, but remember that guys like Calvin Johnson and AJ Hawk were only 3 stars on Rivals. I think they worked out pretty well.

[IrishKnight1023]

I sort of agree in terms of looking at the offer list. My only gripe with that would be if a FL kid gets offered by the big 3 and Georgia. Does that make him an elite prospect? And if he isn't offered by any of them, does that mean he sucks?

Rankings are cool to brag about, but remember that guys like Calvin Johnson and AJ Hawk were only 3 stars on Rivals. I think they worked out pretty well.

---Calvin Johnson wasn't overlooked on Scout though...
http://scout.scout.com/a.z?s=140&p=8&c=1&nid=652459

[untitledproject]

I dunno, I thought CJ was a 4 star on Scout. Might have bumped him up a bit soon after.